The importance of activities which are educational, family-oriented, fun, and are relatively inexpensive is being increasingly recognized nowadays.
Accordingly, there is a need for educational games which can be played by all ages, teach, are low cost, and yet are fun to play.
It has been long recognized that children, and others, will learn better, and remember longer, if the educational material is presented in an amusing and entertaining format.
Earlier devices combining the rhyming of words, the forming of sentences, and playing games are set forth immediately below.
U.S. Pat. No. 641,739 to Thompson is a simple device in which a root suffix such as "at" is printed on a card having a number of circular holes therein. Word discs having words such as "hat" and "bat" are fitted into the holes. Today, this simple device would hold the attention of only the youngest users, and likely only in a classroom setting.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,564,732 to Lynd discloses a sheet of cloth or the like having the outline of a tree thereon, and pear-shaped pairs of tags to be affixed to the limbs. Each of the pear-shaped tags has a word thereon, each word being a homonym of another paired word. This straightforward teaching device shows that words in the English language that sound the same, and rhyme, often have different spellings.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,029,320 to Hausman discloses gamepieces which move along a path set out on a gameboard, various educational problems being set forth on different spaces of the gameboard, and shortcut paths being provided between some of the spaces and other spaces distant therefrom.
U S. Pat. No. 4,671,516 to Lizzola et al. is directed to a gameboard having a path of travel on which a player's gamepiece moves, each one of the spaces on the travel path being a word or words representative of different parts of speech and different sentence fragments. The players collect these sentence fragments and form sentences, while a timer is used to govern the overall length of the game.
British Patent No. 1,238,772, to Kremer, published 7 Jul. 1971, discloses a rhyming game in which a number of cards is provided. Each card has four illustrations and corresponding rhyming words thereon. One of the four rhyming words and pictures is illustrated larger than the others, respectively, so that matched sets of four cards are provided. The play is similar to the conventional card game of "Go Fish" in which players take turns asking other players for cards which belong to the matched set of four cards, for which the asking player is attempting to complete a set.
Accordingly, it can be seen that there exists a need for an educational word rhyming game which can be used by all age groups, is inexpensive, and is fun to play.